Jeff Davis won’t campaign for third term on Wichita school board

Wichita school board member Jeff Davis said he will not campaign for a third term on the board, essentially ceding the District 4 race to his opponent, Joshua Blick.

Davis’ name will remain on the ballot for the April 7 election, however, because he missed the deadline to have it removed.

“I hope I get beat in April,” Davis said Friday.

“If I had known that Josh was going to file, I would not have filed,” he said. “I tried to take my name off of the ballot, but it would have been a whole other attorney-general thing, and I didn’t want to go through all that.”

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Last fall, Chad Taylor filed an emergency petition to remove his name from the ballot for U.S. Senate. The move boosted independent candidate Greg Orman’s chances against U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts but prompted a drawn-out court battle over the ballot issue after Secretary of State Kris Kobach ruled that Taylor should remain on the ballot.

Davis, a recently retired police sergeant who was first elected to the school board in 2007, said he filed for a third term because he didn’t think anyone else would run. Blick submitted his name just minutes before the noon filing deadline Jan. 27.

District 4 includes portions of south and southwest Wichita, but school board members are elected district-wide.

“We’ll see what happens in the election. I don’t think I’ll win,” Davis said. “If I do, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. But I am not actively campaigning for the position.”